being accountable as a pseudonym is not the same thing as being accountable IRL.

Real life has built-in filters that the internet doesn’t. A conversation you have in the real world with 3-dimensional people is tailored to fit that group. You wouldn’t say the same things to work colleagues as you would to close friends or to family. And after you say something in real life the words only exist, if they exist at all, in the memory of the people who heard them.

While at times it might feel here on PAS that it’s just a roomful of friends chatting, anybody could be reading, either now or at any time in the future. Your Mum, your ex, your kids, your potential employer. Those of you who blog and comment here under your real names have my total admiration, but for a variety of reasons that’s not for all of us.

I wouldn’t have shared a fraction of the things I have here if I’d had to use my real name. That doesn’t mean I’m not sincere and that I don’t stand behind everything I’ve said. This pseudonym isn’t to disguise me from you all, only from the world at large.

I was about to say I look forward to meeting a lot more of you in the flesh but on second thoughts I will avoid that phrase. Offline is what I mean!

Yes, Lilith, you’re one of the people I do look forward to meeting. In my experience, PAS folks are, by and large, of great character, and enormously interesting to talk to. My problem is I want to take each and every person away for indepth interrogation, one on one, as the time spent at Great Blends and such is never enough. And the teabagging thing? How innocuous an activity for such an intriguing term. Very disappointing!

There is a device they have in Germany that is known as a “tea condom” (it’s a fabric bag with a metal handle attached – you put loose tea in the bag and dangle it in your teacup).

So an infuser made with fabric rather than just a little cage? I'm trying to think what's like a condom about it. Perhaps German condoms are full of perforations? Or maybe just by the time they're finished with them :-)